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Sunday, April 17, 2016

In her very well received
presentation at the 1ST Nutritional Ketosis and Metabolic
Therapeutics Conference in Tampa recently, Dr.
Mary Newport told the story of her husband’s progressive
neurodegeneration starting 13 years earlier. It is a story she had told before,
and written about in 2008 here,
but she still wonders, “WHAT IF THERE
WAS A CURE FOR ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE AND NO ONE KNEW”? She says, “I plan to
tell everyone I can…” She also encourages readers of the article cited above
to, “Feel free to make copies and pass this write-up on.”

Dr. Newport’s frustration is
palpable. After relating the prediction “that 15,000,000 people in the United
States alone will have Alzheimer’s Disease by the year 2050,” she cites
research done by the NIH’s Dr. Richard Veech:

When Dr. Newport’s husband Steve
started to show signs of progressive dementia, she thought, “Strange to have no
short term memory, and yet the information was filed somewhere in his brain.”
“My gut feeling is that diet has something to do with the fluctuation, but
what?” Then, 8 years ago, while researching new drugs his doctors were
proposing, she learned (in another
drug maker’s patent application!) that “the promising ‘ingredient’ in [that
“other” drug] was simply MCT oil.”
“In a pilot study,” they said, “some people improved on memory testing with the
very first dose.” So, Dr. Newport decided to try it for Steve. What did they
have to lose, she reasoned?

The results of Dr. Newport’s
beginning a therapeutic dose of coconut
oil (60% MCT) for Steve are
best described by these three drawings of a clock (a specific test for
Alzheimer’s Disease). They are indeed pretty compelling.

Dr. Newport was advised that the
“clock” on the left indicated Steve was “leaning more towards severe than
moderate AD.” In clocks #2 and #3 there is an obvious marked improvement.
Extraordinary, don’t you think?

Dr. Newport used coconut oil with Steve “because I
didn’t know at that point that I could easily buy MCT oil online.” Steve took 7 teaspoons of coconut oil twice a day,
which was twice the dose in the patent-application, and sometimes more, “to make sure that there were no periods
without ketone bodies circulating,” she wrote.

“As an alternative, one could take 4
teaspoons of MCT oil once or twice a
day, or more often as tolerated,” Dr. Newport says. “Some people may experience
a sense of ‘fullness’ or even have diarrhea after taking this much to start,
but this problem can be reduced by starting with one or two teaspoons and
increasing over a week or so to the full amount.” Since writing her article, MCT oil is now on the market from
various manufacturers in liquid and powdered form, and will soon be available
in the U.S. as a gel. I intend to use the gel, prophylactically.

Dr. Newport’s hope is that “Dr. Veech and other
MCT oil and ketone body researchers get the funding they need.” As MCT oil is not patentable, Big Pharma (and the
Alzheimer’s Association partly funded by Big Pharma), can’t profit by it, so
why should they spend on the RCTs to prove efficacy? But you don’t have to wait
to try this “treatment,” either as a therapeuticorprophylactic practice. What have you
got to lose?

5 comments:

Hmmm. The graphics didn't post, and I don't know how to fix it. To see them (they are really compelling), click on the 2nd link above (from the top) and go to the article (in bold) that Dr. Newport published. It's a good read.

What exactly does that mean, Ash? Or, more to the point, what exactly do I have to do to move the image files from my hard drive to the Blogger post? Is it just a "cut and paste" edit from my word document to the Blogger post? (Thanks for the analysis, BTW.)

Ash, you were right, of course. There is a very simple upload button on the post editor for images, and I was able to load them easily. However, I could not get them to align on the same level in the text. Apparently the .PNG images have a hidden margin that precludes them loading side by side with the visable borders shown, so I gave up for this post. Next time I will work it all out in advance. Thanks for helping me to become a little more literate in such things.

About Me

I was diagnosed a Type 2 diabetic in 1986. I started a Very Low Carb diet (Atkins Induction) in 2002 to lose weight. I didn’t realize at the time that it would put my diabetes in clinical remission, or that I would be able to give up almost all of my oral diabetes meds. I also didn’t understand that, as I lost weight and continued to eat Very Low Carb, my blood lipids would dramatically improve (doubling my HDL and cutting my triglycerides by 2/3rds) and that my blood pressure would drop from 130/90 to 110/70 on the same meds.
Over the years I changed from Atkins to the Bernstein Diet (designed for diabetics) and, altogether lost 170 pounds. I later regained some and then lost some. As long as I eat Very Low Carb, I am not hungry and I have lots of energy. And I no longer have any of the indications of Metabolic Syndrome.
My goal, as long as I have excess body fat, is to remain continuously in a ketogenic state, both for blood glucose regulation and continued weight loss. I expect that this regimen will continue to provide the benefits of reduced systemic inflammation, improved blood lipids and lower blood pressure as well.